Middleton Lakes...

Seeing as I seem to be slowly getting back into the whole waking up early thing (it has taken a while since the lapse into teenage'esque lay-ins during the Christmas break) I managed to be up, out and at Middleton for a reasonable time. Unsurprisingly some of the local birders had already beaten me there, but that was of little consequence, I was just glad to beat the inevitable Big Garden Birdwatch crowds. The weather was perfect and birdsong was everywhere; this had disappointment written all over it!

The heronry was fairly active with birds coming and going carrying nesting material and having their little squabbles over the best location so as not to get crapped on by your neighbour (a serious concern I would imagine given the size of the birds in question). The pool in front of the viewpoint was frozen but the feeders were busy with all your regular feeder candidates in good numbers - no lesser spotted woodpecker though despite apparently making the odd appearance!

Middleton Lakes Feeders - Jan. 2012 - Mike Ixer

The Woodland Trail set the tone for the visit in two ways. First off, there were lots of birds being very vocal and quite showy - has nobody informed the bird community that it actually isn't Spring yet; it's not even February! Secondly, it was muddy. I don't just mean "Oh no, there is a few puddles" type muddy, I mean "Oh I wish I had brought a spare pair of trousers for the drive home" type of muddy. It was slippery and messy, but to be honest, I loved it!

Walking through the woods there was no shortage of alto song thrushes tuning up with the sopranos taking the form of the robins already showing off as only sopranos can. Stopping at the viewing platform which overlooks the old silt pool a Cetti's warbler decided to have his say somewhere in the distance and a large group of blue tits were giving the reed mace plenty of attention. Pushing further through the woods and my recent good fortune with treecreepers struck again as one gave a very brief but very close show (needless to say the camera let me down again!) followed by a female great spotted woodpecker drumming with what seemed to be a complete disregard for me - an illusion which was shattered when that one more step down the path sent her shouting into the canopy.

Then, as I crossed the small wooden bridge, I got my highlight of 2012 (one which although early, may retain that claim throughout the next 11 months). After searching fruitlessly for a few years and concluding that there was an ornithological conspiracy a foot, a black and white sparrow sized bird flew up from quite low and stuck to a tree trunk just in front of me. It was so close I didn't even need my binoculars to be able to instantly identify it as a male lesser spotted woodpecker - the size, the extra white markings on the back; he was perfect! Unfortunately, my photo wasn't. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, my camera set up struggles in less than perfect light and a woodland is exactly that. In the immortal words of my old music teacher, "you can't polish a turd", so here is the rather smudged attempt at doing so...

Lesser spotted woodpecker - Middleton Lakes - Jan. 2012 - Mike Ixer

After catching the eye of another birder and pointing him in the direction of the bird it performed a vanishing act by scuttling around a tree and then not being there when we looked. But what a treat he was for those few minutes when he was happy to be on show. My only frustration is that I don't know if I will ever get a view this good again, yet I didn't manage to get that one really telling photograph.

So onwards, and it didn't matter what the rest of the day held, it had already been memorable. The lakes held the usual assortment of waterfowl - wigeon, tufted duck, gadwall, shoveler, mallard, coot, moorhen and about 10 goldeneye. I was watching a single little egret hunt the edge of one of the lakes when a small bird flew out from the edge in front of me and perched a little further up the path. When I fixed it in my bins I was delighted to find that it wasn't the reed bunting I had originally assumed it to be, rather it was a very handsome looking male stonechat which was soon joined by a female.

Male stonechat - Middleton Lakes - Jan. 2012 - Mike Ixer

Female stonechat - Middleton Lakes - Jan. 2012 - Mike Ixer

Just as I was losing interest in the stonechats which seemed to be stalking me up the path I heard something which I felt like I hadn't heard in ages! Instinctively I looked up and saw three skylarks singing and fighting overhead - they are always bigger than I remember them. Now I really did feel like Spring was in the air (literally), seems ridiculous for January since I didn't hear my first last year until the end of February. After these two rapid-fire highlights the rest of the Wetlands Trail was fairly average. There were hundreds of Lapwings gathered in a field north of the trail as well as half a dozen shellducks around the lakes. Other birds included great crest and little grebes, kestrel, buzzard, mute swans, greylag and Canada geese, teal, pochard and a green woodpecker (that's all three woodpeckers in one day!).

I was still on a bit of high so decided to have a quick stroll around the Meadow Trail for only my second ever look. Bird wise it was fairly quiet, but aurally it was less so with a couple of quad-bikes and a dirt-bike doing the rounds on the other side of the river. Still a male goosander flying up the river was nice to see, as were the squabbling jays. The cows seemed chilled out and after the bikers gave up it was a beautifully peaceful walk around the meadow perimeter.

English longhorn cattle - Middleton Lakes - Jan. 2012 - Mike Ixer

Just as I undid my jacket to enjoy the exceedingly mild weather another skylark took to the air in a full song flight which must have lasted minutes. His glorious tones finally finished as he parachuted back down to Earth and thus completed natures conspiracy to convince me that it was actually Spring and I had somehow slept for a month without realising.

The walk back along the canal and through the woods was punctuated with yet another treecreeper, a couple of goldcrests, some redwings, a lone coal tit and these long-tailed tits taking over from the blue tits who where feeding on the reed mace earlier.

Long-tailed tit - Middleton Lakes - Jan. 2012 - Mike Ixer

So I got back to the car and took home half the reserve in mud stuck to my trousers, but it was a cracking day out and I notched up 57 species. I love my gadgets, so here is my root for the day: